Page 20 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
I clenched my jaw, swallowing my words. He didn’t need to know I was deathly afraid of any body of water that went past my knees, no point in giving them more weapons to use against me.
Fear was a terrible, powerful thing. And I wouldn’t do anything reckless to endanger my family.
Not again.
“You could have let me drown,” I said.
“And miss this stellar conversation?” He shrugged his big shoulders. “Some regrets we can live with.”
He was about as happy with me being here as I was.
He had steely gray eyes, but they seemed to glow whenever he blinked. Which wasn’t often; he was too focused on analyzing me.
A hunter’s gaze.
He was tall, his short blond hair almost touching the patterned roof of the carriage, but he had the body of a fighter, looking more like a warrior from the fearsome northern Clans. But his tight muscles pushed against the black leather of a Blood Brotherhood uniform. An assassin’s uniform.
“Where are my cousins?”
“They’re safe,” he said after a beat of silence.
Safe. What did that mean by Blood Brotherhood standards? Bleeding on a cot or back in their own strongholds or Aquila, plotting revenge?
My traitorous heart wanted to believe. Wanted to hope.
Safe would have to do for now.
“Who are you?” I asked. Apart from being menacing without saying a word; even his breathing had me on edge. So calm and controlled, when I gulped breath after shaky breath as the carriage jolted over stones and twigs.
“The Blood Brotherhood’s Commander.” No real name. Smart.
We weren’t alone on this rickety path. From the corner of my eye, I spied another carriage behind us. My ears picked up at least five horses, mighty hooves striking the ground at a fast pace.
We were not alone.
My heart gave a bitter echo. Was Zorin safe? Was he still wandering through the mountains or had he been captured like me? I sealed that worry deep inside me, along with so many others I had to live with.
I wouldn’t survive here for long if panic took over. I didn’t even know whereherewas.
Through the delicate lace curtains, I spied a forest unlike any I’d seen. No, not a forest. A jungle, like the ones in the book back home.
Plump, lush plants spread as far as I could see. We were far away from the Marea Luminara shores, then.
I was used to firs and stubborn plants that made due with the only light rays brave enough to cross the mountain peaks, not flowers as big as my head and leaves I could comfortably swaddle my entire body in.
The sun here was almost blinding and it didn’t have the hint of cold it always had back at the cabin. It smelled amazing, too, like a freshness that didn’t want to dig into my lungs and burrow there. We were definitely somewhere near a coast. The airtastedsalty.
Huge, jeweled-colored insects flew between the flowers, completely unbothered, as trees tall as churches rose in thedistance, with vines sloping between them. Every hundred feet or so, stone statues peeked back at me from behind the leaves. They represented some kind of animal I couldn’t name, with big jaws and mighty claws, ready to strike. In the distance, I heard growls and roars I didn’t recognize. They might not have been animals at all.
These weren’t the Protectorate’s perfectly polished gardens, with trimmed shrubs and roses guarding them.
I was so far away from everything I’d ever known.
What had I done?
The question echoed in my brain on a loop, gaining momentum until it sounded like a million voices roaring for an answer.
I didn’t have any.
